A dystopic science-fiction epic, World on a Wire is German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s gloriously cracked, boundlessly inventive take on future paranoia. With dashes of Kubrick, Vonnegut, and Dick, but a flavor entirely his own, Fassbinder tells the noir-spiked tale of reluctant action hero Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch), a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate and governmental conspiracy. At risk? Our entire (virtual) reality as we know it. This long unseen three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the weird world of tomorrow from one of cinema’s kinkiest geniuses.

World On A Wire is a fascinating, odd piece of television. The novel it's based on - Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye - was also the basis of the 1999 film The Thirteenth Floor. I'll be covering this (and, tangentially, World on a Wire) in my essay series The Mason Lang Film Club at http://weaponizer.co.uk The intro to the series can be seen here.